Categories: New York City
06.15.2022
On Monday, June 13th, the City Council voted to adopt the FY 2023 Budget, which will take effect on July 1st. The expense budget is $101.1 billion, which is a $1.4 billion increase over April’s executive budget proposal, and a $2.4 billion increase over the adopted FY 2022 budget.
On Tuesday, June 14th, the Adam’s Administration released its housing plan: Housing Our Neighbors: A Blueprint for Housing and Homelessness.
The Network has done a preliminary review of both the budget and the housing blueprint and will be following up as more details emerge.
ADOPTED BUDGET
Human Services Wages
The budget agreement includes $60 million for legal and human services workers. While we fought hard for $86 million to fund a 5.4% COLA, which would have matched the State’s investment in human services workers, the City is taking an important step toward addressing stagnant low wages in the sector. We will follow up with more detail on how the $60 million will be allocated when the City provides that information.
Housing Capital
On the capital side, the adopted budget appears to largely mirror the executive budget, committing $2.1 billion for the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), a 22% increase over February’s Preliminary Budget for FY 2023, and a 38% increase over the planned commitment for the current fiscal year, FY 2022.
Increases from the Executive Budget
The budget items below were added in the Executive Budget in April, and appear to have been maintained in the final budget agreement:
DSS/DHS
$3.5 million was added for the Department of Social Services (DSS) in FY 2022 and $5.8 million in FY 2023 for resources to expedite supportive housing placements.
$174.6 million in FY 2023 was also added for street outreach, drop-in centers, and new stabilization beds and safe havens.
HASA
$33.8 million was added in FY 2023, including $24 million in City funding, for HASA emergency housing and SROs.
HOUSING BLUEPRINT
Housing Our Neighbors departs from previous housing plans by focusing on impacted people, systems, and processes over a set unit target. Below are some notable components of the blueprint related to supportive housing:
- Accelerate the creation of supportive housing, completing the 15,000 unit commitment in NYC 15/15 two years early, by 2028.
- Streamline and expand access to supportive housing.
- The City will focus on streamlining process requirements and reducing administrative burden.
- The City will explore expanding family supportive housing eligibility to include households with children living with a disability.
- Eliminate the use of clinical evaluations as a barrier to supportive housing.
- The City will instead rely on psychosocial assessments and other administrative data sources to confirm eligibility for supportive housing.
- Leverage zoning to encourage more affordable and supportive housing citywide.
- The administration will propose a package of zoning changes that remove obstacles to developing supportive and affordable housing and allow these projects greater square footage.
- Redevelop underutilized government-owned land.
- Looking beyond well-tapped HPD, the administration will explore land owned by other government agencies, including Health and Hospitals.
- Convert vacant hotels to affordable and supportive housing.